REKUB

From ugly to delicious: chocolate and cakes made from lost fruit and vegetables

Crooked carrots and brown bananas in pastry: does that taste good? According to Antwerp-based Rekub, it absolutely does. The start-up is a huge fan of fruit and vegetables that would normally be wasted as well as fair chocolate. In cooperation with organic farms, local shops and local entrepreneurs, they thus try to fight food waste and the CO2 emissions that come with it. With refined chocolates, cakes and tarts as a result.

A third of food production worldwide ends up in the dustbin. Should food waste be a country, it was the third largest emitter of CO2. Exuberant figures. And all because some fruits and vegetables don't look nice enough to end up on shop shelves. They have weird spots, are too crooked, too big or too small. While they are perfectly edible.

Marijke and Ellien joined forces in 2015 to combat this waste. At the time, Rekub started as a pop-up restaurant working with surplus food (in addition to fruit and vegetables, for example, fish from bycatch). This was followed by an app that allowed traders to publish their surpluses. But since 2023, Rekub has been a full-fledged start-up developing unusual sweets.

A spicy parsnip praline, a classic carrot cake or a beetroot brownie: it's bold and different from what you're used to, but tasty and above all sustainable. The recipes were co-fined by one of our country's best vegetable chefs, Seppe Nobels. The ingredients come from Het Herdershof, Bocal, Nieuwe Vaart, Rico Lab and Het Biohofke. They depend entirely on the season's harvest, but that gives them extra motivation to work with unexpected combinations and constantly innovate. Rekub also organises workshops, where you get to work with the saved harvest yourself.

The time is ripe for initiatives that offer a different perspective on our food system. Because food waste affects everyone. And thanks to Rekub, fortunately, it also tastes good to everyone.